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Daft Punk Unchained, a French documentary by Hervé Martin Delpierre about the mysterious robot musicians, has just premiered in the UK with English subtitles. It looks killer and I hope it screens in the US soon!

Troublemakers is a forthcoming documentary about avant-garde NYC artists Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria, and Michael Heizer who in the late 1960s broke free from the gallery setting to make insane, provocative, and lasting land art installations in the deserts of the American southwest. Read the rest

The Land Art movement was part of the anti-gallery uprising of iconoclastic artists in the 1960s and 1970s. This new film by James Crump is an excellent primer, and it features the movement's largely-reticent voices, including Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria, and Michael Heizer. Read the rest

Over time hippie-inspired Rainbow Gatherings in the forest have become magnets for a new counterculture: homeless teens and young adults. Alice Stein's new film Dirty Kids explores the culture clash and commonality of the two free-spirited groups. Read the rest

Comedian, commercial director and documentarian Jordan Brady hosts a great podcast on commercial filmmaking called Respect The Process. He recently interviewed Ryan Berman, Chief Creative Officer for San Diego ad agency I.D.E.A. The interview is a smart casual conversation between old colleagues about the modern advertising agency, the challenges of staying forward-thinking, and keeping your team fresh and energized.

Late in the podcast (14m30s), the talk turns to Berman's own documentary film on the current state of U.S. patent law, Inventing To Nowhere, which recently screened at SXSW. Though Berman is quick to point out this was a sponsored project for The Innovation Alliance, a tech-industry lobbying group, it is not branded content. The doc is an impassioned plea for inventor protection under whatever patent reform comes from congress.

...we oppose efforts by some multinational companies in Washington, DC to weaken patents and make it harder for inventors and start-ups like us to live out our dream of creating something and calling it our own. With our ideas, willingness to take risks, and hard work, we have just as much right to succeed as they have.

I didn't truly appreciate what a miracle is YouTube til I realized how many half-remembered Sesame Street sketches, songs and puppet shows from my grainy, nostalgic childhood could be found there. Some of them seem quite odd in retrospect, and there are folks out there dedicated to tracking down the oddest.

It all goes a bit creepy when they meet Master Crack, a large, monstrous face-like cluster in a corner of the room, plaster crumbling from the maws of his eyes. Who thought this would be a good idea to show children?

Anyone remember an old Sesame clip that was just the stop-motion transmutation of a sandbox into a desert scene, accompanied by gentle music? I think two toy rhinos were placed into it at the end. If you know that one and can find it, Tweet me (@leighalexander)!

The History Channel's created a bizarre secret history of a war against Martian invaders that's an allegory for WWI. The accompanying video has a spooky resonance and plausibility that is not to be missed.
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Help fund Requiem For A Bird, an artistic documentary about Mumbai's Parsi people who ritualistically gift their dead to vultures whose population there has been decimated as a consequence of an anti-inflammatory drug previously given to cattle. Read the rest

Last week was the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide. Soaked In Bleach is a new film mixing historical footage and interviews with dramatizations that dredges up the tired old conspiracy theory that Cobain didn't kill himself, but was murdered by a hit man. Hired by who? One guess. Of course one of stars, at least of the trailer, is the detective Tom Grant who was retained by Love and later claimed that she had paid a hitman to off her hubby. If all this sounds familiar, you must have seen Nick Broomfield's 1998 documentary "Kurt & Courtney." Read the rest